PHOENIX — Inside Gordon's Feed on Broadway in Phoenix, the phone rings again.
“We do not have any baby chicks right this moment," owner Gordon Grantham tells the caller on the other line. It's not the first time he's had this call.
“Demand is definitely through the roof," Grantham said. "My phone has not stopped ringing for seven days, asking for baby chicks.”
He's completely out of stock, even upping his average order of 500 chicks a week to 700 to meet the demand. Whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first, Grantham says customers are telling him rising egg prices are causing Arizonans to look into getting their own chickens.
“Supply of eggs is down, so they want to start doing their own thing," Grantham said.
And Grantham says doing your own thing makes a lot of financial sense, granted you or your family eat a good amount of eggs.
“I have a start-up kit that has the heat lamp, bulb, feeder, water, everything in there, that’ll cost you $50," Grantham said.
From there, chicks are about $5 each. Grantham says they start laying eggs after four to six months, and it costs $20 a month to feed a dozen of them. Once they start laying eggs, he says this is when people will start to see big savings.
“If you get a good egg-production chicken, you’re looking at about 300 eggs a year," Grantham said.
Meaning in a year’s worth of production, including start-up costs, your cost per dozen eggs could be just over $1. That's well below the average price at stores now, which is around $4.14 a dozen.
“You’re winning, for sure," Grantham said.
Grantham says people having their own chickens to produce eggs not only protects them from high prices but also helps family stores like his. Gordon's Feed was started by his grandfather 55 years ago, and Grantham says he and his family want to be at the same location for 55 more.
“People can get back into doing it for themselves, getting their own eggs doing their own thing," Grantham said. "And then it supports small businesses, people don’t realize, the feed store depends on them.”
